Be a Woman Among Men

I couldn’t tell you exactly how many times I’ve heard a man in one of our classes say, “I’m trying to get my girlfriend to come take a class”, or a female acquaintance say, “My husband keeps trying to get me to go to a class”, but it happens a lot.

Why do these men want so badly for the women in their lives to learn how to shoot? There are probably lots of reasons, but I think the main one is this: good men have a desire to protect and defend, but they can’t follow their loved ones around all the time making sure no one hurts them. It’s impractical, and also leans towards weird. So, what do they do instead? They try their hardest to give the women in their lives the tools and skills to be able to protect themselves. Because who doesn’t want their sister to have any advantage possible over the guy who is six inches taller, 50 pounds heavier and threatening to harm her?

On the other hand, why is it so hard for these men to convince their wives, girlfriends, sisters, and mothers to train for a possible violent encounter? Obviously, I’m not in every woman’s head to know exactly why she’s not jumping at the first mention of firearms training, but I bet I can guess a few reasons.

She’s never done it and she scared to go out of her comfort zone. She lives in a safe area and she thinks she has nothing to worry about. She doesn’t want to think about bad things happening to her. She doesn’t like confrontation. She is already so busy, the thought of learning a new skill is overwhelming. She could never shoot anyone. She’s scared of guns. She doesn’t like the noise or recoil. She doesn’t want to spend the money. She might be the only woman at the class. She doesn’t know anything about guns and doesn’t want to look dumb in front of other people. She’s scared she might hurt herself or someone else.

The list could go on, but I think that a lot of it comes down to fear. Fear of failure, fear of judgment, fear of the reality of the world, and fear of the firearms themselves. The thing is, once she can get past the fear that is stopping her from preparing herself, that fear can be replaced by a confidence in her ability to defend herself, her friends, her children, her grandchildren. She can have the confidence she needs to act, and not panic, should she ever need to defend life.

Another thing happens when she can get past her fear. She can become a partner in the defense of her home and family. The trope is that there’s a bump in the night and the man gets out of bed to investigate by himself, while the woman huddles shaking in the bed.

Now imagine that they both get out of bed. They’ve both trained and planned together what they would do if something like this happens. They work as a team, knowing each other’s strengths and weaknesses. They have each other to rely on, instead of one being left to deal with the threat alone. This is what can come when we move beyond fear.

Don’t allow the fear of judgment or inadequacy stop you from bettering yourself. As women, wives, sisters and mothers, we must lay aside fear and prepare ourselves to stand shoulder to shoulder with our men in defending our lives, our loved ones, and our liberty.

-Abby